[Graeme Dice]

The Panther said:
I fail to see how a competent Caelum player will lose any seraphs.

Rain of stones for Arco and Vanheim. Raise skeletons for C'tis. Howl for Man and Pangaea. Machaka can use all three of these at once. Growing fury if you really are short on mages and need to keep your troops from routing. Acid rain for T'ien C'Hi and Atlantis. Vanadrott's and the like for Vanheim or Tuatha. Devils, devils and more devils for Abysia or Mictlan. Add in fireshielded lightning immune Archdevils and falling fires to clear away false horrows. Astral tempset for anyone with golems.

Too much fear for anything but perhaps undead.

Or vine ogres or mechanical men or living statues.

Even enemy fliers can only kill a few of the archers who are close by.

You didn't bring storms? Devils will kill your archers on the first turns, then quickly move on your seraphs and other troops. They won't rout either.

In particular, Ulm had no chance. His smiths always targeted his own troops once the horrors appeared. His best strategy was scripting fire shield on his commanders where he could.

Ulm versus the air nations is always uneven. This isn't a particularly good comparison point.

Surprisingly enough, the seraphs frequently switched to frozen heart against the bane lords and Jontun infantry once the script ran out, which was very good.

No, they certainly didn't switch to frozen heart, since bane lords and Jotuns are both immune to cold.

Arco was a rookie in his second MP game, that much was true. He could have beat me with the astral mind spells which ignore the horrors. But he had too many priests and not enough astrologers.

He brought priests to a battle with Caelum. That tells you that the Arco player didn't really have a good grasp of how to defeat Caelum. He'd have been better off throwing around the elemental battlefield magic that arco is good at.

Certainly not 20 seraphs.

How are you planning to defend them against a spell like rain of stones, which is especially devastating against physically weak mages? Or howl, that brings wolves up behind your troops?

Also, the seraphs are so incredibly cheap for their power that Caelum will always have more fighting mages than any other race.

They certainly won't research much faster or have more mages than C'Tis, nor Utgard, nor Machaka.

I will agree that Caelum becomes somewhat limited late game, but I have not played past about turn 70 in any MP game as yet.

Late game is about turn 20-40 onwards, depending on when people have developed magical paths other than what their nation easily provides.